and cents. And so at Harvard the investigations constantly going on in the chemical and physical laboratories, at the Botanic Garden, Agassiz's Museum, and the Observatory, though resulting almost daily in the discovery of new truths, are hardly calculated to awaken popular interest or enthusiasm.
The labors of Professor Benjamin Peirce, the head of the mathematical department, are too extensive to admit of more than a passing mention here. In addition to his private mathematical, physical, and astronomical work, he has entered the field of philosophy in his recent lectures on the connection between religion and science.
In the last publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in which, by the way, seven of the eight papers are by Harvard investigators, appear the following "Propositions in Cosmical Physics," by Professor Benjamin Peirce:
1. All stellar light emanates from superheated gas. Hence the sun and stars are gaseous bodies.
2. Gaseous bodies, in the process of radiating light and heat, condense and become hotter throughout their mass.
3. It is probable that their surface would become colder if there were not an external supply of heat from the collision of meteors.
4. Large celestial bodies are constantly deriving superficial heat from the collision of meteors, till at length the surface becomes superheated gas, which constitution must finally extend through the mass.
5. Small celestial bodies are constantly cooling till they become invisible solid meteors.
6. The heat of space consists of two parts: first, that of radiation principally from the stars, which is small, except in the immediate vicinity of the stars; the second portion is derived from the velocity with which the meteors strike the planet at which the observation is taken; and this velocity partly depends upon the mass of the star by which the orbit of the planet is defined, and partly upon the mass of the planet itself.
7. If the planets were originally formed by the collision of meteors, it is difficult to account for an initial heat sufficient to liquefy them, and, at the same time, to account for their subsequent cooling without a great change in the number and nature of the meteors; and any such hypothesis seems to invalidate the meteoric theory.
8. If the planets were not originally formed by the collision of meteors, their common direction of rotation becomes difficult of explanation.
Professor J. M. Peirce has recently published a set of "Mathematical Tables," in which the part relating to "Hyperbolic Functions" is entirely original. Other work in this department is represented by Professor Byerly's "Differential Calculus" and Mr. Wheeler's "Elementary Plane and Spherical Trigonometry."
The forbidding granite building called "Boylston Hall" conceals scenes of strange activity. Unwonted odors irritate the inexperienced
